There’s a discarded can of Irn-Bru behind the fencing on Argyle Street. Whoever chucked it in the vacant worksite twisted it up until the aluminium collapsed in on itself.

It stands out amid the detritus, I think, because I feel like that can every time I have to come into Glasgow city centre. It feels like every corner I turn, everyone is squeezed together, pushed to the margins of the public realm by stalled improvement projects or emergency repair works.

Scotland’s largest city is trapped between progress and decay. A stifling sense of civic fatigue has descended over Glasgow, and no matter how many times I try to tell myself that soon, it will all be better, I can’t help but be agitated every time I have to navigate persistent decline, litter, and disconnected construction projects.

Much of this crushing sense of exhaustion comes from constantly being told by the council that disruption is necessary, and that the city is in a period of transition. It also comes from the sense of embarrassment I find bubbling up in my throat lately when trying to defend the place to friends who live elsewhere.

This week the council considered a pay scheme that would draw a line under the long-running equal pay dispute. The plan is to implement, after a decade, a new pay-and-grading structure to replace the system that unlawfully underpaid predominantly female workers, sometimes by as much as £3 an hour compared to their male counterparts.

It started in 2006, when the then-Labour administration’s new (discriminatory) pay arrangements left women in cleaning, catering, care, and school support jobs earning less than equivalent jobs in roles like cleansing or parks. It took a decade of litigation for the council to settle £505 million in claims in 2019. But they still hadn’t fixed the old scheme. By 2023, around 19,000 current and former workers had been settled or were in the........

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